


What if This is All You Ever Get (Silver)

by Lecavayay



Series: Be a Lady and a Freak, oh [1]
Category: Men's Hockey RPF
Genre: High Heels, M/M, Tampa Bay Lightning, Timestamp
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-18
Updated: 2019-04-18
Packaged: 2020-01-16 04:39:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,383
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18514078
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lecavayay/pseuds/Lecavayay
Summary: He really thought this was the year he’d get to wear them.





	What if This is All You Ever Get (Silver)

Tyler is a little ball of flames, burning bright and angry the whole flight home. It’s late and it smells like rain, the tarmac soaked as they all unload themselves into their cars. One by one they splinter off until it’s mostly just Tyler and Pally and Kuch standing around Kuch’s Mercedes. Tyler presses his forehead to the passenger side window and groans. He thinks about how it would feel to punch through the glass, shatter it into pieces.

“Are we going home or sleeping here on the ground?” Kuch asks, finally snapping open the driver’s door. “I’m tired.”

Tyler feels like he could run home. He is so brightly awake and alive with anger he can’t imagine laying in bed and closing his eyes. All he would see is mistakes, pucks in a net, fucking cannons. He gets in the passenger seat and crosses his arms, huffing.

“Don’t be like this,” Pally says from the backseat.

“I’ll be however I want.”

“I wish you wouldn’t.”

Tyler frowns and Kuch turns up the radio.

 

Their house is quiet, Snowy and Reese still at the doggie hotel, and Tyler hates it. He kicks off his shoes and throws himself down on the couch. None of them have turned their phones back on, avoiding the notifications that are no doubt collecting. Tyler considers the TV remote but Kuch moves it out of his reach before settling in the little nest of pillows they piled up in the corner of the sectional.

“How long are you going to be mad?”

Pally drops a water bottle next to Tyler’s hip, tosses another to Kuch. “Let him be mad, Nik.”

“Do you think I’m not mad?” he asks, cracking the seal on the bottle. “You are acting like we all didn’t just lose. Like we all weren’t good enough. We have the same amount of summer ahead of us, nothing to be done about it now.”

“Can we please shut up about it?” Tyler mumbles, face stuffed in the arm of the couch.

“What if we all just go to bed?” Pally tries. “It’s late.”

Kuch yawns, gets to his feet. “Best idea.”

“Tyler?”

Tyler pushes himself up to sitting, hangs his head. “I’ll be in in a little bit. There’s a couple things I need to do.”

“No murder,” Kuch says, heading for the hall and their bedroom.

Pally comes around the couch, lifts Tyler’s chin with a finger. “Don’t stay up all night.”

Tyler doesn’t want to look at him, doesn’t want to see the same pain and anger and sadness reflected back in his blue eyes. He jerks his head away, focusing instead on the stitching of the leather couch. He runs his fingers along it.

Pally doesn’t try again, just follows Kuch down the hallway.

Tyler waits until the door shuts, counts to ten. He heads for the bedroom they turned into an office and locks the door behind him. He goes right for the closet, clicking on the light inside.

All of his shoes stand at attention, toes pointed out. Red, black, blue, and pink lined up on the shelf that’s eye height. The shelf below has a large cream-colored box Tyler filled with his silk and lace panties in all kinds of colors, delicate stockings to match. There’s a garter belt in there too, and a sheer pink babydoll. A little velvet bag with lipstick and mascara. His lavender silk robe hangs next to everything, thigh high leather boots from Halloween propped up on the floor.

He’s not interested in any of these things, though. Not tonight.

He drops to his knees and reaches into the back, behind the boots and the robe. There’s a simple grey shoe box back there, hidden away from prying eyes. Tyler wants to crush it, break down each side until it’s flat, rip it to pieces. He wants to burn the contents.

He never should have bought them.

He should have walked by the store in Los Angeles and never looked back.

He lifts the lid of the box and sighs. The silver shoes are still as beautiful as he remembers. He traces the delicate strap that would go around his ankle, down the sharp heel. He’s never worn them, never even taken them out of the box.

He really thought this was the year he’d get to wear them.

The tears come quickly, gross and snotty. He covers his face as they drench his cheeks and drip down his chin. It wasn’t supposed to end like this. They were supposed to be better.

They were supposed to be the best.

God, they were supposed to be amazing but instead he’s on his floor at two o’clock in the morning crying over a box of stilettos.

He flops onto his back and tries to get himself together. Tries not to think about what it would have felt like to go all the way, to finish the season with a silver cherry on top instead of steaming pile of shit.

He’s so fucking angry.

Putting the lid back on the silver shoes, he closes his closet and takes the box with him back into the hall, through the living room, into the kitchen. He opens the pantry, kicks open the trash can, and throws the shoes away.

It’s garbage day on Thursday. They’ll be out of the house then.

Gone.

And any bad luck or curses gone with them.

//

Ondrej wakes up when a bit of sun sneaks through the curtains and hits him right across his eyes. There’s a weight on his chest, a closed fist. Tyler’s face is peaceful in sleep and he’s warm, curled up against Ondrej’s side. Nik isn’t there at all, his spot empty and probably already cool.

Ondrej presses a kiss to the top of Tyler’s head and slips out from under him, letting him sleep. He didn’t hear him come to bed last night, wonders briefly how long he stayed up.

He finds Nik in the kitchen watching the coffee brew, hair sticking up in all different directions. “How are you feeling?”

Nik just shrugs, keeps staring at the coffee maker. Ondrej drops a kiss to the knob of his spine as he passes behind him to grab a couple mugs down from the cabinet. He goes into the pantry for the sugar packets and is disappointed to find only a few left.

He pops the trash can open to throw away the empty container and freezes. There’s a plain gray shoebox sitting on top. It’s not a big deal except for the fact that in this house, it’s never _just_ a shoebox.

Ondrej lifts it out of the trash. “Do you know what this is?” he asks, offering the box to Nik.

“Empty box?”

“It’s not empty.” He lifts the lid and feels his heart sink. “Oh.”

Nik comes close to have a look. “What are pretty shoes doing in the pantry?”

“They were in the trash.”

Nik’s brow wrinkles in confusion. “I’ve never seen them before. You buy them for him?”

“No, I…I didn’t.” Ondrej knows without a doubt this is what Tyler did last night after they went to bed. What he wanted to do alone. “They’re silver.”

“So?”

“Silver like the Cup.”

Everything seems to connect for Nik and his face falls. “He never wore them.”

“Never had the occasion.”

Nik takes the box, puts the lid back on it. “We have to keep them. Hide them away until we win.”

Ondrej nods. “The closet in the bathroom. We can hide them behind the towels on the top shelf. He’s too short.”

They scamper off to the master bathroom and Nik holds the towels while Ondrej shoves the silver shoes to the back of the highest shelf and shuts the door. Problem solved.

“We could buy him new shoes to cheer him up,” Nik suggests. “Maybe like, wedges? For summer?”

“That might be nice.”

“Could take his mind off those. Make him forget.”

“Forget about what?” Tyler asks, sleepily rubbing his eyes awake in the doorway.

“Nothing!” Ondrej and Nik chorus, immediately pushing past Tyler and making themselves scarce.

Ondrej goes back to his coffee, mixes in the last of the sugar and smiles thinking about how beautiful Tyler would look in silver.

_Will_ look. 


End file.
